


roads less traveled

by theseourbodies



Category: due South
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-09-13 22:19:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9144763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseourbodies/pseuds/theseourbodies
Summary: Ray Kowalski first came to Canada searching for the stupid fucks who killed his partner. For reasons that he doesn't particularly want to talk about right now, he's stayed to consult with the RCMP and Constable Benton Fraser.Complete canon AU





	1. The beginning

**Author's Note:**

> See end note for notes on character death.

Ray doesn't know what draws him back to the rooftop. He just knows that he needs to see the crime scene one last time before they cut the tape for good and everything gets blown away in the next heavy rain storm off the lake.

It's loud, even 10 stories up, Chicago all around him. Even so, he's been a cop in this city long enough that the city-sounds are part of the background now, as good as white noise. The racking of a weapon rings loudly when set against the familiar ebb and flow of the city. Ray freezes, long coat fluttering around his stiff legs. 

"You're gonna kill a cop in cold blood?" he asks the thin air as calmly as if he were asking for dessert. His heart is racing; he doesn't know where to look. Ray lets his gaze sweep around the roof-top, the nearby buildings; there's nothing to see. With stiff fingers he taps his chest, right over his heart. "This blood bleeds blue," he says loudly, projecting a certainty he feels deep in his bones. "There ain't no place you can run where they won't find you."

The white noise of the city fills the empty space after Ray finishes. When it comes, it's quick; he doesn't hear the shot that kills him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ray puts his partner in the ground, to begin with

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies, I am making som decisions about the direction I want this story to go in and progress is slow. Have a brief update!

It's a hell of a day, the day they have to put Ray Vecchio in the ground. Cold and over-bright the way the city gets in the early winter, before the first snow-fall. Ray Kowalski wants rain, wants misery, but the sky is crisp and cloudless, the air cleaner-seeming than any other day that week. It is, he thinks, just another in a series of fucked up things about the whole situation-- his partner dead and lifeless being buried in the formal Sergeant's uniform he had despised with a hole in his head on a clear-as-crystal beauty of a morning, and oh _Christ_ , oh God, he wishes it was pouring rain in late summer and not the breath-stealing cold of winter. He can't seem to get his useless eyes to stop watering at bad moments--in the echoing bathroom at the church during the wake and again in the GTO inching along behind the limo holding the family, and then now, with his hands wrapped too-tight around the brass-capped bars running along the c-coffin. The least the universe can do is lend him a little _goddamn cover_. 

If life were a movie, it would be Ray Kowalski-- Ray the only child with his far-off parents, Ray with his ex-wife who would probably only ever think of him fondly if he died hard and bloody in the middle of the job, Ray with his few belongings and fewer attachments-- and not Ray Vecchio going into the ground today. Not Ray Vecchio, who had a house and loans and whose heart beat for every single member of his whacko family. 

Ray shouldn't be calling them whacko, since they've all of them done the lion's share of the hard business of funeral preparation after Ray had made the hardest notification of his life to date a week before. Wake, funeral, flowers, obituaries, flowers, too many casseroles to count, more flowers still; they'd borne the weight of all of it while Ray was still trying to find his footing, set adrift a little in the city that felt more unfriendly than it ever had.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loss is a heavy burden. Frannie and Ray talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An update!

Frannie finds him after the wake and before they leave, dry-eyed but red rimmed where she'd been crying. Her small face is set and serious and she doesn't smile. Francesca Vecchio may have hated her brother more than she liked him most days, for the way he treated her like a dumb kid mostly, but she'd loved him the way he'd loved her--fiercely, and with teeth. Frannie'd known Vecchio better than any woman he'd ever loved-- probably definitely better than the mystery woman Vecchio only talked about in the confessional-dark of witching hour during stake outs, certainly better than Angie, who he'd spent five years married to and a year and a half in the divorce courts with. The funeral blacks make her look smaller than she ever has; her eyes, red from weeping, seem even larger than usual. She doesn't have to be weeping like a fountain for him to see the hurt in her, the blank space left by loss. 

"Ray," she rasps without preamble, direct the way she gets when she's really angry, "Ray, you get this bastard. I don't care what they say, I don't care what you have to do. Someone was, someone was--" and she wavers for the first time all day, rage and confusion and hurt all there in the set of her body, the sudden crumpled shape of her mouth. "Someone was waiting for him, up there," she continues with care, " maybe not him even, but someone was waiting. This isn't-- this isn't what we--" 

And Ray knows what she means, what she's trying to share with him. It seems bad and terrible to say "this wasn't the way we thought he would die," but he knows it's the truth. Gunned down on the top of a high-rise with a high-powered rifle from 150 yards away-- it's pulp fiction stuff, bad drama. Ray Vecchio had been a man of high drama in everything but his actual day job-- he'd been in the shit with IA before Ray had become his partner, and had therefore been on the low-man cases, the burglaries, the fraud cases, the civilian complaints, the cases that were high in paperwork and low on meaningful contributions to his rep and resume. Since then, in his years with Ray, they'd gotten into some serious and seriously fucked up cases, real name-makers if you could get over the scars-- real and otherwise--they'd left behind. 

Even so, even with some of the worst of those cases, there wasn't anything-- shouldn't have been anything to warrant a hit like this. This wasn't-- shouldn't have been the type of shit detectives like Vecchio and Ray had to deal with. 

But here they are, and now Ray has no choice. He has to deal with it, whether he likes it or not. 

"Yeah, Frannie, yeah. I get it, ok, I've, I've got it," Ray mutters, his own voice rough and low. Neither of them are crying, now, but it hangs on the both of them, lingers in their throats. He wonders what he looks like, to her. _Trust me, I'll find them, I'll do it,_ he doesn't blurt, scared of promises he can't keep, choked by the fear and the grief. 

_Trust me._

**Author's Note:**

> Ray V occupies the narrative space of Fraser Sr. in this AU. He is a ghost for the majority of the story.


End file.
